For 'Monuments Men,' George Clooney gets surprise German gift

February 04, 2014|Reuters

By Mary Milliken

LOS ANGELES, Feb 4 (Reuters) - For the most ambitious of hisfive films as director, George Clooney assembled a top-shelfcast of fellow actors to play art experts tasked with retrievingartistic treasure stolen by the Germans during World War Two.

There is one person, though, who is not a HollywoodA-lister, not listed in the credits and who may play a big rolein the box-office success of "The Monuments Men": an elderlyGerman recluse who hoarded more than 1,400 artworks stolen bythe Nazis and valued at 1 billion euros ($1.3 billion).

When actor Bill Murray heard the news in November of thevast trove art discovered in the Munich apartment of CorneliusGurlitt, he was glad the release of "The Monuments Men" had beendelayed by a few months to February.

"This story has had time to resonate and travel around theworld, so more people will be aware of the situation," saidMurray, who plays a Chicago architect recruited late in the warfor a middle-aged Allied unit on a mission sanctioned by U.S.President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

The film opens in North America on Friday and will make itsinternational premiere Saturday at the Berlin International FilmFestival.

Co-star Matt Damon calls the real-life, contemporaryillustration of the 70-year-old problem of Nazi-looted art"fortuitous for the film," but hardly surprising.

"I wasn't surprised at all given what I learned making themovie about all the artwork that is out there that has not beenrecovered," said Damon, who plays a New York museum director.

Clooney, who also co-wrote and stars in "The Monuments Men,"says "it's great that it came out."

German authorities found Gurlitt's cache in 2012, andClooney calls the recent disclosure of the priceless paintingsand drawings, which include works by modernist masters Chagalland Matisse, "interesting timing," without elaborating.

A MUCH BIGGER FILM

For Clooney, "The Monuments Men" is "by far, by far" hismost ambitious project in a career directing smaller films like"The Ides of March" and "Good Night, and Good Luck."

"I guess it is probably double the budget of any film I haveever worked on, and certainly in scope and size it is a lotbigger," said Clooney.

The film cost $70 million to make, shared by Sony Corp and 21st Century Fox, and is forecast to bringin $24 million in its first weekend in Canada and the UnitedStates.

He and producing-writing partner Grant Heslov based themovie on the book of the same name by Robert Edsel, and wereinspired by the men that formed that group, but changed namesand took liberties to develop characters. Clooney, 52, playsFrank Stokes, the group's leader and an art historian, based onGeorge Stout from Harvard's Fogg Museum.

Clooney rounded out his Monuments Men with a sculptor playedby John Goodman, Bob Balaban as a theater director, JeanDujardin as a French-Jewish art dealer, and Hugh Bonneville asan alcoholic British art expert looking for a second chance.Cate Blanchett plays a Parisian curator who leads Damon to findart stowed away in mines by the retreating Nazis.

One of the toughest parts was striking the right tone in afilm that is part World War Two buddy story, part art heist,part history lesson.

"You don't want it to be a civics lesson," Clooney said."You want it to be entertaining, you want people to enjoythemselves, laugh at some of the stuff. But it is also a veryserious subject matter."

As to the decision to push back the film from a Christmasrelease, where it could have competed for this year's Oscars, toFebruary, Clooney chalked it up to delays in the computergenerated imaging.

Todd McCarthy at the Hollywood Reporter predicted "a moremodest box office life than its cast might have indicated," butnoted that the discovery of the Gurlitt trove could benefit thefilm publicity-wise.

As it happens, the real Monuments Men actually interactedwith Gurlitt's father, art dealer Hildebrand Gurlitt, who workedfor the Nazis selling art branded "degenerate" that was takenfrom museums or stolen or extorted from Jews fleeing theHolocaust. After the war, he convinced the Monuments Men toreturn works to him that had been confiscated by Allied troops.

Clooney hopes the film will create more awareness so thatpeople holding artworks like Gurlitt will feel some pressure toreturn them to their owners.

"I think it would be nice if they gave paintings back to thepeople who, fleeing for their life, gave them away. I think itwould be a fair thing to do after 70 years," he said.

Meanwhile, Gurlitt has demanded his art back and lawyersworking on reclaiming property for heirs to Jewish collectorssay he may get to keep at least some of it.

As riveting as the Gurlitt story may be, Clooney said he hadnot even thought of making a film about the recluse or evenplaying him.

"That would be very funny," he said, before adding, "I don'tthink I should play a German."